


Break My Arms Around My Love

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Last of Us, Uncharted
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2021232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was supposed to win. That's how this works, how it always works. There's a goddamn deus ex machina, a god literally from the machine to pluck them out of the fire. She would have been dead for sure, and then he would have saved her, or something, and everything would have ended up okay.</p>
<p>He was supposed to win. Not lose absolutely everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break My Arms Around My Love

It always comes back to the gun. The gun is a weight, an anchor. The gun holds him down. Some days it feels like he's dragging it, like iron shackled to his wrist. More than once, he's thought of corpses, and how many he's added to the world's ever-rising bodycount. Very many, is the closest he's ever come to a figure. Very, very many. Too many. He never thought of himself as a killer, as someone defined by the act of murder, but it's hard to escape that now.

_You're not a bad person._ She said it until the end, until he put a bullet in her head. She tried to remind him. She was telling him so many pretty lies, and he put full faith and credit in each one, because that's what you do when you love someone.

_You're not a bad person, Nathan._

Your fingers are not melted around the grip. It is not part of you, not your flesh. No. No, your nails are not bullets, Nathan. They're not. Your hand is not an instrument of death, and when you've robbed families of fathers and sons it was because you were given no choice in the matter.

He stares into the fire, grips the gun that murdered her. He could have thrown it away but he keeps it, because two years ago he traded his wedding ring for ammunition and it's all he has left of her now.

 

~

 

Morning in Pittsburgh, before Pittsburgh died. Except hadn't it already been dying? Slow, being eaten away like everywhere else, and of course one thinks of the spores working into the tissue of the brain and those slow synaptic misfires, getting quicker and quicker. One thinks of madness, and indeed madness is contagious in a way the cordyceps is not. You don't need to be bitten, and you don't need to take a breath in the wrong place at the wrong time. All you have to do is breathe anywhere. Everywhere. All you have to do is exist.

So those had been cruel parodies of good days, when at least you didn't have to kill for food and _killing for food_ didn't ever mean what it means in some places out here. Sully, old man before his time—but everyone gets old so quickly now—not even moving much toward the end. But sit by his bed in the thin sunlight, watch the soft movements of the torn curtains, listen to the sirens. Hold his hand. By now she's gone. Never thought much about family, but a lot has changed.

_Nate._ He grins like a ghost, asks for scotch. There actually is some this time, and a wrinkled skin mag, and he gets both of them as a consolation prize for almost not being alive anymore. He almost certainly has cancer, but no doctors would treat him. What remains of civilization is in a constant state of triage. There is no attempt to save the people who probably can't be saved.

There are the Fireflies. But perversely, both of them insist that they're not made to be heroes. Drunk enough, backing each other up, they don't see it as cowardice.

Sully coughs blood. Hold his head up so he doesn't choke on it, wipe his mouth when he's done. Cool cloth on his brow. He subsides. Stories of past adventures, then, and so much lethal danger and so much terror vanish under a gauzy soft-focus lens of romance.

Romancing so many stones. Smile at that.

Always hated that fucking movie.

This is a stupid death. All the deaths are stupid deaths. Death up close. Bullets always made it easier.

Sully closes his hand around the grip. He knows what it means. Knows what it is. Even if he wasn't there at the time.

_Nate, you're gonna have to find a way to get past this. You're gonna have to find a way to survive. That's what you do. You think you're a killer? That's not the end-all be-all of it, and you know it._

More eloquence, more smooth phrasing than he ever had before, drifting like dust on a cracked old voice.

_What you are is life. By your fucking fingernails, Nate. By your nails._

In those last days he said, over and over in his few remaining moments of lucidity, that Pittsburgh would not long outlive him.

Sully was always a prophet.

 

_~_

Hotels in exotic countries. He was always a tourist. Swaggering in, ordering drinks, taking things. He thought a lot of himself, hapless treasure hunter living charmed. At the time he would have denied this but self-deception is no longer something for which he has the luxury. Self-deception gets people killed.

The measure of the world before is that self-deception kept him alive, then.

There now, curl against the sloping wall of the broken drainpipe. Perversely, it's dry. He's learned to keep absolutely still when he sleeps, absolutely silent. When there are nightmares he swallows the screams. When he sees her he wakes up with his face wet, the last of soundless tears.

Still holding onto the gun, he examines his fingernails in the moonlight, broken and packed with dirt and blood and ash. Fifteen years ago, in the first months of what would become the new world, he had a recurring dream in which his hands turned to gold. The skin was not merely gilded; he could feel his muscles going cold and heavy, his bones, his frozen tendons and ligaments. He would stare at them, and think about becoming his own treasure, what that might mean, and as the gold crept up his forearms he would realize that it was coming for his heart, and he would wake up screaming.

Gold weighs him down like a gun. Poured down the throats of conquistadors. _Aren't these organs lovely, this stomach and these motionless, airless lungs. This heavy heart._

_El Dorado made monsters of men._

Tomorrow he'll move on. He's passing Boston, but he won't go there. Even if they wouldn't shoot him for his pains, he's done with quarantine zones. You want self-deception? That's it, right there. The bloody-minded insistence that the world has not come to an end.

Except it hasn't. The world couldn't possibly care any less. The world is moving on, too.

 

~

 

Elena was the one trying to comfort him. He was shaking, pulling back, denying. She held out her hand; he wouldn't look at the bite on her calf. But he looked at it after, studied it for what felt like hours, as if it could explain something. It was very neat, was the thing. Not savage and ragged, like all the bites he had seen before. Precise. As if not madness but cognitive intent had guided the cordyceps impulse to propagate.

As if it had wanted to make the business as kind as possible.

He didn't look at the bite, and then he didn't look at her, because he knew that when he did, all he would see was the fungus eating its way into her, ruining her. He wouldn't see her face but instead what was under it, knitting itself into her brain, and he couldn't bear to remember her that way.

These stories always end in murder.

_Nate, come here._ He loved her hands. He loved her hands on his face, and that was where she touched him, palms against his cheeks, thumbs already smearing away the tears he hadn't yet shed. _Please don't make this harder than it already is._

He was supposed to _win_. That's how this works, how it always works. There's danger and the threat of death and then there's a goddamn _deus ex machina_ , a god literally from the fucking machine to pluck them all out of the fire and set them down on level ground. He always takes the impossible shot. He always makes the impossible leap. He always jumps from the exploding vehicle at the last possible moment. She would have been dead for sure, and then he would have saved her, or something, and everything would have ended up okay even if the rest of the world was gone to shit.

He was supposed to win. Not lose absolutely everything.

Lips on his brow. He wanted to beg her to bite him, and that was _so_ fucked up and _so_ stupid.

_If you love me you'll do this for me._

_We promised each other. You remember. Don't you dare back out now. Come on, you've done harder things._

I love you. I love you, I love you. Fingers around the grip. Just like ten thousand times before. Your heart is a bullet, Nathan. This is what it does.

~

You and the cordyceps. You were made for each other.

This is only a question of scale.

~

He's already deep in the bowels of the building when they come for him.

Stupid, stupid. Running, desperately trying to remember where the stairway is. All death is stupid. He never should have let down his guard, but swear to the god he doesn't actually believe in, he never heard them. Runners, too. Never inclined toward silence. They whisper and wail. But these... Maybe he was lost in his own head. That's happening more and more these days. Nothing anyway, for his trouble, as he tears down the dark corridor, stumbles, pulls himself up and keeps running. No food, nothing he can use, and he's so low on everything. Behind him they're screaming through the world, closing in. They're faster, unhampered by a pack, unhampered by all the fucking corpses he's dragging.

Keep it, keep it, oh god, it's all he has.

The stairs feel as if they're sloping back down, trying to slide him into their teeth. His fingers scrabble at the wall, his nails break too far up the quick. This is where the god comes from the machine and saves him, he thinks as the daylight breaks in on him and he pounds past broken windows, over blistered paint and shattered tile. This is where he takes the shot, makes the leap. This is where he gets his last-second salvation, and he doesn't die stupid and alone.

There are so many of them.

Somewhere ahead of him, there's the door. If he can shut it, if he can barricade it, and then run again; into the woods, find a hole to crawl into. He's done it before. He knows how.

But fetid breath, practically in his face. Something about the breath of the infected. It's almost sweet, in the sense of decay. Sweet in a way that's worse than anything.

They're all chanting. They are all the dead he's dragging.

_Was it worth it? Was it all worth it? Your Midas touch, Nathan? All your worthless gold? All your gems, do you have any idea how soaked in blood they were? All those raped and ravaged lands, and you took what you wanted, and was it worth it? Do you comfort yourself with the thought that you saved the world? Does that work? Do you sleep well?_

_When you put the bullet in her, did you really think it was going to end any other way?_

_How much longer can you run, Nathan?_

_How much longer do you want to?_

They have the pack. They're dragging him backward. He stares at the sunlight until he can't see any more, and he lets them pull him into their embrace.

 

~

 

Elena held his face, and then she held his hand. She curled his finger around the trigger. She pressed the muzzle against her temple.

_Nate, I need it to be you._

_Don't you fucking do this, you coward. Don't you back out. Don't you just lie down and die. You never did that before, don't you DARE do it now. I love you, I fucking love you, so DO IT._

Nathan Drake is a bullet crashing through the skull of the world.

 

~

 

_Honey, please don't kid yourself. Don't be dramatic. You were never that important._

~

 

Shrug it off. Stagger, tear away. Leave it all behind, the growling and the screams, the sound of everything in the world being torn apart behind. It's a few seconds. It's all there is. To the door, pull it shut, broken pipe through the handles. Keep your feet, Nate. Keep your feet.

At some point he's back among the trees.

There's light. It comes in shafts through the leaves, all green and gold, gilt and emeralds, the sky a great sapphire. It's all so perfect. It's a world he could cradle like a treasure.

He drops to his knees on the dirt and moss. After a while he stares down at his hand. It's wrapped around the grip. It's what he has. It's her. It's everything. It's an anchor and a shackle. He can't let go.

_Nate, at some point you need to be okay with who you are._

Self-help bullshit. He laughed at her. He laughs now, and it's so true. This is what he is, and he was right, and Sully was right, and Elena was right, and he's still here. And all around him, the dead eyes look back, and he'll bear that gaze because he's done it this long and he's come this far, and he has a long, long way to go.

And all he leaves behind are footprints.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Daughters of the Soho Riots" by The National.


End file.
